Yes, this is very good. You took absolutely the right approach. Give it one more read through for some grammatical errors (there are quite a few... honestly, I was too engaged in reading the review to remember them all) but otherwise, this is an awesome piece.

Note to gamers: when someone shoots you in the face, they aren't "gay." They are "psychopathic."

Huh? This is beyond awful. I'm not even entirely sure I know what kind of game it is after reading that. I get it's a very nice piece of writing, but as a review on a video game I've never heard of, it fails. And it's supposed to be a review on a video game I've never heard of, right?

Stomping around that town like Godzilla was crazy fun, collecting figments wasn't so much.

That paragraph all about Freud and your views on his theories seemed very much out of place, and I started to feel that I'd played a very different game. And no, I'm not going to write my own review of the game, as it's been a long time since I played it, but I had to go and read some other reviews to remember that it really was the same game I'd played.

Put simply, the inner self and outer self are almost two separate people, but changing the inner self affects the outer self in maintaining sanity and helping people come to peace with deeply personal issues.

That's the second time you said about putting something simply, and both times the following statements were far from simple, though you acknowledged that the first time!

As someone who has only seen Psychonauts in action briefly, I'd say your point about its personality is well made, but perhaps a little more attention to the basics (what kind of game is this in the first place?) would improve the piece. It's a general nagging feeling I get with a lot of HG reviews, though, where an otherwise strong piece does leave me wondering if it would be sufficient to inform a newcomer to the game what they're dealing with.

Of course, I tend to overcompensate in the other direction and get stuck on more technical detail than I should. It's a fine line, I suppose.

I like the underlying theme behind this review, that Psychonauts is special despite its simple gameplay. Having an idea or argument that runs throughout the writing is definitely a good thing, and will lead to sophisticated, interesting reviews. However, as others have said, the review does gloss over the gameplay a bit too much and the Freud thing was confusing and awkward. I think this may be partly due to the fact that you haven't written anything for a while. It's not easy to jump straight back into writing after a break and say exactly what you mean in the most eloquent way.

Ok. I've taken everyone's feedback into consideration and have edited the review appropriately as best I could. Mainly I tried making things smoother and less confusing, though I didn't cut out whole paragraphs or anything because the whole point for me writing the review was to argue something non-traditional. That being said, I did take out some sentences that were perhaps irrelevant or otherwise rearranged and rewrote things to make them more relevant, so hopefully it's better now. Either way, I'm satisfied enough with it; even with editing, I still end up arguing the things I wanted to argue. Despite what Zipp says, I still don't expect a whole lot from it, though I do hope the edited version gets at least a little better reception.

Thanks to everyone who commented. Though I will say that I don't particularly appreciate psychopenguin's insults. (What happened to you? You weren't this brash last time you were around.). But despite that, he did have a valid point, so I did try to add more fundamental stuff at the beginning. That being said, I still didn't alter focus to that or even discuss it in that much detail because fundamental game play isn't the focus of the review. However, I will admit that you really can't have a complicated argument without explaining at least some of the basics first, so that's what I tried to do.

[Eating EmP's brain] probably isn't a good idea. I mean... He's British, which means his brain's wired for PAL and your eyes are NTSC. - Will